The Division

The Division Review In Progress Ė If Mass Effect, GTA, and Destiny Had a Baby

The Division is an incredibly ambitious game. Although its too early to judge The Division as a whole, it only takes a few hours of gameplay to see its not so subtle inspirations. So far, what The Division feels like is if Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto, and Destiny all had a test tube baby in New York City, and the baby is, well, actually kind of cute.

The Division doesnít waste a lot of time holding your hand. In a succinct, non-offensive tutorial to start the game in Brooklyn, youíre quickly introduced to the basic gameplay and mission structure. After a couple of short missions, youíll be dropped into the open world of Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, youíre shown your home base, that you will be building up throughout the game and really after that, youíre on your own to explore.

This structure to start the game feels a lot like how Grand Theft Auto is set up. Youíll be checking your map often as it will constantly evolve to include more destinations that you can set your waypoint to and check out. Similar to how GTA has different mission givers that you can visit, The Division has that same kind of structure with the Medical, Security, and Tech wings. Once you kick each one of them off, youíll get a steady stream of missions and side missions to take on for them.

Youíre not anchored to those missions though. At any point you could just go kick it in Manhattan and do whatever you like. The Divisionís open world is very similar to Destinyís but with some big improvements. There are plenty of encounters and side quests Ė which are quite similar to public events and patrols but more ubiquitous Ė for you to take on anytime you leave your home base. Some of those missions are tied to the three wings in your home base. Completing them provides supplies to the wings which allows you to upgrade your base and gain new skills, talents, and perks. While itís hard to say how interesting they will be 30+ hours in, early on at least, they are quite fun.

Youíll be able to meet up with other players at the various safe houses around Manhattan or out in the open; and with just a couple of button clicks, you can team up with them. Whatís especially handy are the matchmaking stations which are found right outside of the start of main missions. Want to go at it solo? Just go ahead and proceed. Want buddies? You can start matchmaking right within your own game. This always online open world is obviously inspired by games like Destiny, but feels way more fluid and natural.

The Divisionís take on an open world Manhattan leaves a strong first impression, however, thatís not the only aspect that shines. The Divisionís RPG elements, which take a page from Mass Effectís book are also very promising. As mentioned earlier, through upgrading your base, you can unlock new abilities to customize your character from the three main skill trees: Medical, Security, and Tech. In a lot of ways they feel similar to the classic MMO paradigm of healer, tank, and DPS, but not as rigid. Like Mass Effect, you can map your favorite skills from any tree to be used in battle seamlessly and eventually upgrade them to further enhance them.

However, Commander Shepard rarely went at it alone and ideally, youíll show up to battle with a squad of teammates each with complimentary abilities because The Division can actually be pretty challenging, at least to start. The AI will punish you if you run in with guns blazing. Youíll need to take advantage of your full set of perks, skills, talents, and grenades to survive. If youíre the only one around to take all the enemiesí heat, expect to have a much rougher time.

What would have been nice though is if The Division could have also pulled a page from the Gears of War series, and done a better job with its cover mechanics. If there is one not so nice thing to say about The Division that you could pick up on right away is that itís kind of a clunky game. Shooting and using abilities work well enough, despite not being groundbreaking; however trying to move around between cover feels very stiff and janky. Itís the only aspect so far that feels dated and sub-par.

At least so far, while everything is fresh, itís hard not to be optimistic about The Division. It takes some really intelligent inspirations from great games, while still feeling like itís own unique product. As of now though, itís still too early to tell if The Division will be closer to Destiny or Mass Effect as far story quality goes.

More importantly, though, itís unknown how much depth The Divisionís endgame will have. In order to be this massive open world game thatís going to stretch an entire season pass and beyond, there needs to a reason to stick around once the main game is complete. Its peers such as Destiny and Grand Theft Auto Online have done this admirably, but thereís certainly room for improvement. Based on what is on display early on in The Division, thereís no reason not to believe that The Division couldnít pull it off just as well, if not better than the rest.

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his" - General George S. Patton

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